DAY HALL—Cornell’s Presidential Task Force on Institutional Voice issued its final recommendations for the University on February 5. Formed in March of last year, the Task Force aimed to codify expectations for the University’s official response to political issues.
- All statements from the administration should adhere to a strict policy of political neutrality.
- Students and faculty are gently encouraged to adopt the same policy in their personal and professional lives.
- The University should continue to promote diverse voices on campus through speaking events and engagements.
- Wait, no. Scratch that one. Ann Coulter’s booked up.
- University administrators are advised to treat private and public funding as interchangeable.
- Now that the federal government only serves private interests, this distinction is largely obsolete.
- The administration’s use of ‘institutional voice’ should take a clear and consistent form.
- The Task Force suggests a deep, threatening baritone issuing forth from sleek campus-wide loudspeakers.
- No political organizations should be permitted to recruit through Cornell Career Services.
- Students interested in ridding our great country of sinister political actors may be interested in a position at ICE or CBP.
- Heaps of yummy hay are to be delivered twice-weekly to the Office of the President at 300 Day Hall.
- How did that get in there? Oh, Kotlikoff, you rascal!
- Remember the core values of higher education.
- Instead of distracting themselves with the petty squabbles of the public sphere, elite academic institutions should focus on their historic mission of providing the wealthy with the highly exclusive social and cultural capital needed to protect and reproduce their wealth.
- Renew our commitment to Ezra Cornell’s founding principle.
- (Certain people, certain studies.)
- Reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
- This is the University’s final, most essential command.
